AD Classics: Vitra Design Museum and Factory / Frank Gehry

An independent private foundation, the Vitra Museum was founded in 1989 by the CEO Rolf Fehlbaum. Focusing mainly on furniture and interior design, the museum features work from Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Alvar Aalto, Verner Panton, Dieter Rams, Richard Hutten and Michael Thonet. The modern architecture which houses these collections was the first building of Frank Gehryin Europe, and included the museum for Rolf Fehlbaum’s private collection, production hall, and gatehouse for the factory of Vitra.

Easily recognizable as the architectural style of Frank Gehry, the deconstructive sculptural building differs only slightly than his usual designs in that he limits his materials to white plaster and a titanium-zinc alloy. As said by the architect, “I love the shaping I can do when I’m sketching. And it never occurred to me that I would do it in a building. The first thing I built of anything like that is Vitra in Germany.

At only 8,000-square-feet, the two-story Vitra Museum is one of the world’s largest collections of furniture, with pieces from most periods and styles beginning with the nineteenth century and continuing into the modern era. A functional mix of towers, ramps and cubes, the volumes of the building are determined by lighting and programmatic necessities.

Courtesy of Newsbuilding

At the rear end of the building, the factory hall relates to the adjacent building by Nicholas Grimshaw in both size and height. A formal link between the museum is found in the towers and ramps, which bridge together the production areas, showroom, test laboratory, cafeteria, a multi-purpose room and offices.

Paul Heyer, an architecture critic, described the visitor’s experience as “a continuous changing swirl of white forms on the exterior, each seemingly without apparent relationship to the other, with its interiors a dynamically powerful interplay, in turn directly expressive of the exterior convolutions. As a totality it resolves itself into an entwined coherent display…” Surrounded by a meadow of cherry trees, the museum is also nearby to Claes Oldenburg’s sculpture Balancing Tools, as well as a conference pavilion by Tadao Ando.